{"id":245609,"date":"2025-10-28T12:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T12:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/245609\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T12:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T12:41:11","slug":"why-sunderland-are-succeeding-and-how-they-convinced-xhaka-to-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/245609\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sunderland are succeeding and how they convinced Xhaka to sign"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the latest episode of BBC Radio 5 Live&#8217;s Monday Night Club, the panel discusses Sunderland&#8217;s fantastic start to the Premier League season.<\/p>\n<p>Former Premier League winger Andros Townsend says Regis Le Bris&#8217; side are getting the balance right tactically, adding that they are &#8220;looking to press high but are also happy to sit back and be compact&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Sunderland fan Frankie Francis spoke about the excitement among supporters, and told the story of how the club&#8217;s owner managed to persuade Granit Xhaka to move to the Stadium of Light following their promotion from the Championship.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\/episodes\/p0gls5n7\/monday-night-club?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/brand\/b0070hx6?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:listen on BBC Sounds;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">listen on BBC Sounds<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Watch on BBC iPlayer banner\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"114\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/e263ce73de81542df3d388318eefd430.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>[BBC]<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Listen on BBC Sounds banner\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"114\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1a61f3ed653b711cc2e92cf142be2132.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>[BBC]<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761655271_92_\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the latest episode of BBC Radio 5 Live&#8217;s Monday Night Club, the panel discusses Sunderland&#8217;s fantastic start&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[115153,49,48,114630,574,115154,561,82,63434],"class_list":{"0":"post-245609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-andros-townsend","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-granit-xhaka","12":"tag-premier-league","13":"tag-regis-le-bris","14":"tag-soccer","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sunderland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}